Evo walked along the main path which he knew would take him closer to the indian camp, but he’d no real idea of where it lay. Keeping an eye on the low jungle on his right he saw what seemed to be a far more narrow path, overgrown in part but clearly in steady use. He took it, certain he’d find his way back – the heat growing now but Evo was sure he’d not have to go far. Leaves stuck to his bare legs as he wore shorts in the heat. The murmur of sporadic walkers on the main path succumbed to the chirp of insects and Evo strained to hear any sign of human life ahead. Soon, even the insects fell silent and his footsteps and heartbeats filled his years. The wind rustled the increasingly dense foliage, but only now and then, filling Evo with a new disquiet. He kept walking as though he had no choice.
Two men appeared soundless before him, emerging from behind clusters of leaves and vines seemingly two small to have concealed them. They stared at Evo; not in wonder or curiosity but with hardness and the suggestion of distaste. He held still, suddenly conscious of the fact he bore nothing with him – not a piece of food nor a drop of water, and then calmly held up one hand, figuring quite rightly that if they’d wanted him dead he would have been without having known.
“Hola.”
They nodded.
“I’m not armed. Just walking. It is beautiful here. Muy bonita.”
“You come just for the beautiful trees?” One spoke quietly.
They were lean and just a little shorter than Evo but fit, wiry and strong. Both dark olive with jet black eyes – black in black eyes. With European slacks chopped short they wore thin vine belts across their chests like sashes, behind them narrow, soft quivers, though only one carried with him a short bow, which he held like a cleaver. The other seemed unarmed; as Evo was unaware of the Colt - chamber and barrel concealed by his trousers and the butt resting against the small of the man’s back.
Evo felt he could not lie to these men, but was not prepared yet to tell them the whole truth – as he barely understood the whole truth himself. He knew, though, it would be best to proffer a more complete explanation before it was requested.
“There is a girl in your village who works at the same plantation as me, as a water-carrier, and I believe she is in danger. I need to speak to her.”
The two men looked at each other blankly, but one of them almost let a smirk escape and Evo saw it. They did not believe him, but it was a good-natured disbelief. The taller of the two spoke, and he too quietly. The both had strong, deliberate voices in Spanish.
“Come with us and be sure you will not survive any dishonourable conduct.”
“Yes – certainly.” Evo said and, though not asked, he raised his hands and turned around once to show he was unarmed, but the men had already turned their back and were walking away. They already knew, he thought.
They walked for what seemed an interminable time and Evo lost count of the turns. He became convinced they’d circled back; wondered if the men were playing a prank on the white devil. After all else that had happened, it was the least they were entitled to. He became thirsty, breathed the moist air deeply but it seemed only to make it worse. The two men seemed to be pacing themselves for his sake… he cramped up and pushed through it. Finally the reached the camp.
Evo considered looking back over his shoulder and thought better of it.
“You don’t know your way back.” One of the men turned and smiled at him. “But we will.”
They reached a point and halted. One of the two men motioned for Evo to wait and departed. Evo drew a crowd – but only of children, who milled about him speaking excitedly in their native tongue. One took his hand – a small girl – who looked up and spoke Spanish haltingly, in an extraordinarily sweet voice, though she paused and furrowed her brow between each one or two words. She asked his name and where he was from and he freely told her. He began to explain why he’d come and she giggled, waving her hand quickly in front of her face, just under her chin – with her little brown palm facing him. “No no no” she said – it was too much for her to understand.
The man who’d left returned with a taller, older man – powerfully built and in native dress but for his hair – which he wore short like a European. Evo noticed the man’s upper arms, torso and legs were just slightly more pale than his face and forearms. ‘He has lived and worked among Europeans and still does – but returns to his own ways when here’, Evo concluded. He was not usually so observant, but not knowing if he would see this village again or, indeed, even survive the day, he took in all details. He saw the man’s face and found something familiar in it, though he was certain he’d not seen him before. Vindicating Evo’s theory; the man spoke Spanish beautifully.
“It is my child who works among your men, bringing water.”
A number of indian girls worked at the plantation and Evo wondered if the man was right, and, if he was, how he could have known.
“So then, tell me why you are here.”
Evo spoke bluntly. “The son of the plantation owner watches her. I know him – he’s a dangerous man.”
The man stared impassively.
“My daughter has only began her work there these past days and already you see him watching her?”
Evo found this question awkward – and suddenly the fresh lunacy of this endeavour struck him. He had been terrified of the hunger in the serpent’s eyes and, driven by some kind of madness, had come to the indian camp to save the young woman from what likely was a danger only in his fevered imagination.
The father turned and called out. Saha Omatec emerged and moved lightly towards them.
“Good day,” Evo said anxiously. She did not respond. Her father spoke.
“I see it is my child of whom you speak. Do you wish to marry, Spaniard?”
Saha looked shocked and Evo, never an adept liar at the calmest of times, blurted out ‘yes’.
*
Mr Omatec was never called Mr Omatec by anyone, but if there was ever to be a moment that he would have been called Mr Omatec; that moment was now.
“Spaniard, do you speak the truth?”
“Yes – on both matters. I do believe your daughter is in danger. That is why I am here. The other, ah… thing, I would not have spoken of if you had not asked.”
Omatec looked into Evo’s eyes. The two men either side of him and a pace back looked at one another surreptitiously.
“I meet many of your kind, and despite this name I use – you are not all Spaniard to me. Only here do I use this name, in my world, so that you know it is ours and not yours, yet. You are here because you wish to marry. If you thought a girl was in danger, you would try to help I imagine, but you would not take this risk unless you loved her. And it is a risk.”
Omatec motioned for the two men behind him to leave and looked Evo in the eye.
“How many years have you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen and not yet married? What is wrong with you?”
“I am different.”
“Of course you are.”
Omatec laughed, much to Evo’s surprise. His face remained disconcertingly smooth as he laughed. Evo was suddenly struck by the notion that Omatec was a god – and felt a kind of sudden terror for less than a fraction of a moment (a flash so brief as to almost instantly make one wonder if it had ever happened) – before remarking to himself, calmly, that the man was barely thirty-five, the others perhaps twenty.
“Different or not, you are a Spaniard. For many years it has been the intention your brothers to destroy us. War, disease and starvation. Your children, Spaniard, will be what?”
“Men.”
Omatec smiled.
“No one is just a man. We would all be free if that were the case. We are born men, and grow to become something less – cane cutter, water bearer, Jesuit, bandit, slave… landlord.”
The forest creaked around them, the two men behind Omatec stock-still, his daughter stared at her father, not once lifting her eyes to meet
Evo’s.
“Do you know how a people dies? It is not guns and disease alone. It is when they are forgotten, even by themselves.
I was young and foolish once. Her mother was as you are, Spaniard.
Your children will be as you are. And their children will not know who they are. That is how a people dies.
There will be no question of marriage, but you have come to us with a warning. Whatever your ultimate intention, you have endeavoured to help us.”
Evo spoke; “You know I am speaking the truth.”
“Coming to us, telling us of the danger – you would know my daughter would perhaps not come to your plantation again and you would not see her again, yet, you came here to tell us. This is how I know you tell the truth, and this is how I knew your wish to marry.”
Omatec turned to his men and spoke his native tongue. They departed. He motioned for Saha to sit and she obeyed.
“My daughter too is nineteen years and unmarried. Strange, isn’t it Spaniard?”
“It is not strange. It is miraculous.”
Omatec turned to his daughter and spoke to her in his language. Evo had heard it a few times but had only picked up the greetings and had a rough idea of certain expressions of exasperation. The man turned back to Evo.
“If we take your word, if we believe it – and, while your madness makes you honest, we have no reason to – what then? What would you have us do?”
Evo had not thought this far ahead.
“Kill the snake.”
Omatec stared through him.
“You are mad Spaniard. To kill the son of a landlord would mean men here, hunting for us like animals. But you do not want that, you speak with heat, when you must speak coldly.”
He sent his daughter away and called in his men, conferring with them rapidly. He motioned them clear and turned back to Evo.
“Madman, go back to your people. We will make our own plans.”
Omatec motioned for his two men to lead Evo out. As they walked him out he looked over his shoulder again and again, searching for Saha amongst the trees and leaves and the children darting in and out between them. He searched in vain and his eyes fell on Omatec, standing now – and watching him closely.
* * *
The snake sat at the table – a fine polished oak table utterly ridiculous in the centre of the wretched old army hall. He read that day’s paper – so new he could have smelt the ink, if he had a sense of smell.
“I don’t like this Hitler character one bit – that man is not up my alley.” He rustled the pages anxiously and peered into the abyss.
“He’s cold, like a machine. No sense of adventure. Even the parades with the flaming torches and the lights and all that showbusiness – it’s all mechanised to me. It’s all cold. It’s manufactured passion, every drop of it. That’s the problem with politics – it takes all the art out of power, and reduces it to a mathematical equation.”
He looked up and stared into the eyes of his companion.
“What? You don’t agree? This Hitler – he put Communists on meat hooks. Meat hooks! Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the value of terror, but when you control a whole state, Adolf, a whole country – don’t you think you’ve gone beyond the need for goddamned meat hooks?”
He seemed genuinely angered by the idea.
The companion simply stared at him.
“Don’t give me that look, Pocahontas, not now – not ever. You and your silent reproaches. I know what I’m talking about. And no, I’m nothing like him. I’ve still got a sense of joy about me, a sense of art, an appreciation of drama. This guy is just a bean counter. An abacus. One of those… adding machines. He’s whole way of doing business is like driving a harvester over them while they’re doped and tied. Disgusting.”
He mused some more and tried to steer the conversation to new ground.
“I don’t mind Communists so much, you know. I mean, they’ve no sense of fun – but they’re tough. They’re a stick-to-it bunch, the kind you’d want beside you in the trenches. Though not these trenches” – he motioned around the hall – “because they’re all together too… too full of thoughts. Better to keep the ambitions of your men simple. Modest, never. But simple, definitely.”
He threw the paper down and the sound, though gentle, echoed in the empty room.
The Blue Man sat at the table alone. A dozen mattresses were stacked in one corner of the great hall, the latrines and ablutions were beyond the wall he faced, the kitchen behind the wall behind him by about twenty yards. He insisted the boys stack their mattresses every morning and unstacked them only at night. He found discipline distasteful, but hated the idea of mattresses on the floor around the clock even more. The boys were out.
That morning, like all mornings, he’d woken up before anyone, but today he had slipped away to buy a paper and a coffee from a café; the proprietor of which barely bothered to hide his horror. ‘So what?’ The Blue Man had thought. ‘Better to be honest. I’m a horrifying man, but I’m a man of flesh and blood – not a mechanical killer like Hitler. Like this whole charade’. He’s knocked the coffee back fast – he asked for it “strong as God will allow” because his sense of taste was mostly gone. He was in the street again and walked fast, seeing how the blue light was giving way to yellow and day.
He reached his motorcar and was away, the city soon chopping past him like the blades of an electric fan.
‘This whole charade,’ he thought, ‘where men and women are devoured all the time and people think it’s fine. All the personality is stripped out of it, though we’re still like Rome, or the Huns, or the Vikings, or every other gang of wretched blood-thirsty sons of bitches that came before us – but for them, it was different – for them it was honest, it was art, and people celebrated it, gloried in it. Now it’s all hypocrisy and a thin layer of tight-faced piety stretched over cold grinding gears.’
Barely beyond the built up borough and already hurtling now, his mind went with the spirit of the minute.
‘A man who doesn’t know fear or remorse – is an extraordinary man. But a machine that doesn’t know fear or remorse is just like any other machine. A system that kills by scientific management is not extraordinary at all. It’s devoid of adventure and passion, it’s sadistic without nerve or audacity, and worst of all; it’s unsporting!’
The Blue Man left the engine running and walked inside, the newspaper half-read under his arm.
“Motor’s outside running, so get to work,” he’d startled them at breakfast, but they’d moved fast and within moments he was alone with his paper.
* * *
When Anna Paoli first hired Anna Vassiliki Kalassis, she thought she was employing an Italian with whom she could speak her island Genoese when English did not suffice. But the Greek girl put paid to that hope the moment she painstakingly completed her documents of employment, not for the IRS, of course, but for Anna’s own archives. The Greek Anna proved not only to be thoroughly unsatisfactory in her command of Anna’s italianate dialect (and French, for that matter), but, being freshly delivered by sea, barely adequate in English.
“I will call you Vassiliki,” Anna said.
“Vassiliki, Anna Vassiliki.” The girl had pointed to herself.
“Yes yes – I call you Vassiliki because I am Anna.” She spoke too fast.
Furrowing her generous brows the Greek stayed silent for a moment.
“You Anna, I Anna.”
Anna nodded. “Yes yes… I will call you Anna Vassiliki.”
This promise to use both names pleased Anna Vassiliki greatly, but was not kept beyond her first second day. Anna called her Vassiliki, and Vassiliki called her Anna.
Vassiliki was adept, nimble and, it soon become apparent, imaginative. She struggled to explain her ideas verbally but showed a startling degree of raw talent in illustrations she sketched with an almost mad urgency. She was nineteen, according to her documents, and unmarried – a ma
tter of grave concern to her parents. Within a week, she was able to explain her situation to Anna as they took a break for strong black coffee just after midnight.
“They say I not good cook. They say – no man want me. Man want of me.” She shot Anna a look as if to say ‘challenge me on that’. “But I don’t want of them. They say I am like animal in the fields. For them, I not read when little girl. Not Greek, not English. Now I read Greek, but like little girl. They want to keep me like them, for them – the world is small. For me, it is big.” She swept her right hand out to her side. “You smoke?”
“No.”
Vassiliki grinned. “You are good girl.” She reached into her pouch bag and deftly rolled a cigarette. “I smoke?”
Anna misheard her, the girl had blurred the words together as ‘e-smock’, and shook her head. Vassiliki looked perplexed, pausing hesitantly with her matches in her hand and the smoke between her teeth. Anna understood.
“Yes – go ahead.”
“Ah!” The Greek girl lit up with understanding, then lit up. She punched a cloud of blue into the air in front of her and turned to Anna.
“Do you smoke?”
“That’s it. No I do not.”
Vassiliki seemed delighted.
“Can I smoke?”
“Yes you can. Fantastic.”
“Fantastic.”
Anna considered it. Vassiliki had never smoked in the store before, or even outside in the street. In one week she’d not even smelt of smoke. She was waiting for a better grasp of English and a little more grounding in the friendship, Anna concluded. Fair enough, she thought, and tried to remember if she’d ever done anything similar. No, she’d arrived far too young for even that innocent variation of guile.
The Greek girl’s family came with her, making it a little harder for her to really understand Anna but also making her deeply impressed by her new boss’ resilience.